Dear Ramona,
I read with interest your latest contribution to the Times’ “blogging” columns. The title, I guess, said it all (A campus of self-entitled twerps) although you did specify from the very start that generalisations can be odious.
To be quite honest I too have begun to wonder recently whether the quality of of our beloved Alma Mater’s end product is deteriorating at a faster rate than the Desserta chocolates of yesteryear. My observation is that students seem to start university with – yes, you said it – that sense of self-entitlement that ultimately means that “since I made it to day one then I am entitled to the final degree – whatever garbage I produce in the interim”.
I am fully aware that my observation too is a generalisation. I am quite sure that an independent observer who would have peeked at our behaviour during the law course years of the vintage class of ’99 when we shared the benches at the hallowed halls of Tal-Qroqq might have found a thing or two to say about our levels of distraction. Anecdotes and reminiscences apart the point is that I believe that notwithstanding the (perceived or real) fluctuating standards of readers at university we might be dealing – in all probability – with a constant that has persevered through the ages ever since the first universities were set up from Bologna to Cambridge i.e. the boring lecturer.
Let us not, after all, be distracted by the latest form of distractions available (be they facebook equipped netbooks or twitter enabled smartphones) and concentrate for a moment on the actual issue at hand. A lecturer has been told, in not too indirect a manner, that his delivery during lectures is as boring as a buzzing fly. Less interesting actually. It’s not always easy to point fingers at the persons who will be armed with that marking pen at the end of the semester. I still have fond memories of my “friends” patting me on the back after my not too kind graduation speech criticising the mess at the faculty of Law back in 1996 (B.A.). “Good luck with finishing the course” said many a sarcastic bastard.
Newton (Sir Isaac of gravity and refraction) is said to have penned a list of forty problems that he intended to tackle in science during a particularly boring lecture. Amicus Plato amicus Aristotle magis amica veritas – he prefaced: truth is a better friend. So it has been through the ages where many a supposed deliverer of truth managed only to deliver sleep-inducing drones. Need I cite our own experiences? Best not.
Yes Ramona. While I would probably stand by you (and many another) in a call for more exacting standards for today’s studying masses I would also be prepared to audi alteram partem and see whether the alleged perpetrator of mass boredom by power point was guilty of anything.
And that is where I’ve got a problem. For the alleged Mr Boredom of the hundred or more slides is none other than part-time internet troll Antoine Vella. The very man who never missed an occasion to remind J’accuse and its readers how boring the content of this site was according to his most venerable opinion (when he was not seconding other “interesting” personalities in calling me such names as wanker or whatever playground term was popular at the time).
Yes Ramona, I am biased because the man who was unable to keep a lecture theatre ever so slightly interested in whatever he was on about is a ubiquitous troll of the internet kind. His activity online might also explain why he will probably find many a defender in some circles of the net where he is considered less boring and slightly more droll.
I’d suggest a litmus test before judging whether students or lecturer was at tort in this case. Before descending into vulgar generalisation or risking ad hominem arguments we should allow Vella a chance to counter this accusation. This is why J’accuse is willing to allow Vella to make use of the modern technologies that he targeted in his letter and to provide us with the full power point presentation that we would gladly carry on our site as Exhibit Number 1 – while willingly risking the possibility of boring our esteemed readers to death (again, he would say).
We’ll let the audience be the judges of that no? They say the proof of the pudding is in the eating… it’s either that or eat humble pie.
What do you say Antoine?
17 replies on “A Letter to Ramona (re: twerps)”
Surely, judging a lecturer’s lecturing ability by the slides he uses is as fair and effective a measure as judging a music record by its artwork.
About the case, I’m more disappointed by the students than anything else. I find going to the press about the lecturer’s email uncomfortably close to the schoolyard ‘gazja’. If one is going to the press to criticize somebody for being boring, the least they can do is be a bit creative about it. I’m disappointed that they did not (to my knowledge at least) turn up to their lectures with massive cardboard boxes to write notes on, perhaps with a journalist strategically lurking in the vicinities.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz …….
did they go to the press or was the story discovered on the net?
Can’t say i’m sure. But from what I recall you may be right. Either way, the students had a choice to make and they chose the boring one.
I’m not too sure about this. Are you saying that an Internet troll can only give boring lectures?
Yes, of course I’ll send them to you (address?). The only condition is that you will view the material and give your opinion and, if the anonymous twerp was wrong, you will say so.
@Claire – No. Those are two distinct issues. Here they are again:
1. Antoine Vella is an internet troll.
2. I mooted the possibility that Antoine’s lectures were boring.
@Antoine – Glad you accepted the challenge. Send me the ppt at myname at mysurname dot gmail dot com. You can also send me a link to the ppt if it is already hosted somewhere. Chances are I will use google docs to be able to post it here which might mean that some quality of the ppt is lost. If anyone has better ideas of how I can “host” a ppt feel free to tell me.
Why the code? Is your email address jacques@zammit.gmail.com?
I have sent you ALL the lecture presentations I gave to this class because a couple of twerps indulged in their twerpish behaviour from the first lecturers – when I decided to ban this behaviour I had delivered the presentation called Ecosystems and part of the one called Biomes. They are in pdf fom not as ppt.
My bad. myname dot mysurname at gmail dot com. the “code” is a precaution. robots and trolls you know. and what is the point of typing out the email in full if you sussed out that it is a code?
And justto be clear…. It is the pdf printout of a power point presentation right?
I mentioned the email address because you have two names so i wasn’t sure that it was jacques or jacquerene. Yes, they are pdf files of the powerpoint presentations used for the lectures and later sent to them. I am also trying to upload them myself on google docs as I didn’t know there was this possibility.
Maybe this is easier – the last one is a large file of 500 slides (8 hours of lectures)
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxNobNun2jtsVWt0eTFMbUE0QUk
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxNobNun2jtseGJ6djFJby1JLU0
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxNobNun2jtsTl9NMERVTHZDRjQ
Hmm. The soaring legal eagle seems to have gone AWOL.
Good morning Mr Lecturer. In case you think I’ve gone AWOL because I am not stuck trolling on various websites like your kind self you’ve got another one coming. Just because I don’t blog in spurts of video links or cut and pastes from facebook or newspapers does not mean I don’t blog at all. I just blog in the best way possible – when I feel like.
Now, let this soaring legal eagle reply to this boring pedant. As you can see the link to your docs is now up. It had been blocked by my spam checker because it included more than two links in the post. Again. Readers can now access the three docs.
Now to the content. First of all there is this quote that I lift from Mark Anthony Falzon’s Sunday article. It is actually a comment that you posted on the Timesonline:
“Knowing that many young people nowadays have short attention spans, the presentations are designed so that students do not have to stare at the same picture for more than 35 to 45 seconds …”
It is good to bear this statement of yours in mind when assessing the evidence. Then there is the subject. It’s fantastic. You couldn’t have a more fun subject to present and share the knowledge with students. Evolution? For heaven’s sake it stopped being nerd and geek material before Darwin returned to the mainland. Your own slides are full of the kind of facts that would even keep a student suffering from ADD hooked.
Evolution again I say. Dragons, goalkeeper’s namesakes, lost theories, dinosaurs. It’s all there – the potential of delivering a joyride of a lecture that could even get the greatest numbskull (or as you like to call them “cretin”) in the class to force his neurones back into sparking action. There’s no doubt you couldn’t hope for a “more fun” subject than that. My google docs seems to be unable to open the “taxonomy” and “abiotic environ” slides but let me give you the benefit of the doubt and imagine that the content is just as interesting.
So what could possibly have gone wrong? What leads a student to post about the series of slides and conclude that the lectures are less interesting than a buzzing fly? Well I can, on the face of the evidence, still only hazard a guess.
First of all your premiss that an average student has a short attention span underlies all your slide presentations. In my lecturing years 40 slides in two hours would have me worried that I was verging into the land of boredom by power point. And I did not lecture about the joys of evolution but the more down to earth free movement of goods in the European Union. Lord help me if I have been guilty of not rendering the jurisprudence of the hallowed court sufficiently interesting.
Ah yes, students. They absolutely do not have a right to be entertained. On that we (and that we is myself and Claire Bonello) are absolutely in agreement. Thez do have an expectation however not to be bored brainless. Again my experience at University, this time on the student benches reminds me a thing or two. You inevitably have the odd lecturer who believes that two hours spent droning away in monotone shooting case after case (yep, mine was law) that repeated the same old jurisprudence would be in any way conducive to “learning”.
I would assume that “interesting” as in interest in the subject content is taken as read in a university content. What the powerpointpresentation would a student be doing in a credit class if he or she were not interested in the subject aye? (Admittedly there are the students who have opted for credits to catch up with credit number requirements but I’d assume that evolution is not a compensatory add on as Female Anthropology was in my days at Uni).
So on the whole I do find your 45 second premiss unfair and self-defeating. I am not prepared to pander to the squealing student who will jump at any excuse to hide his inability to grasp a subject and who concludes that the subject was “not well presented” by a lecturer. I still despair when I notice how many students treat their time at Uni a just another “school” with homework and exams. Whatever happened to “reading” at university?
However, while I will not tolerate this student “twerpiness” much in the same manner as Ramona did, I am still not totally convinced as to the “interesting” side of your lectures – and by that I mean delivery. It’s not the subject that lacks punch (and I love the slides – though less would be best), it’s not the laptops and smart phones that distract….
Not to worry though all is not lost. We know what the problem(s) is (are) and all we need to do is adapt. No? A bit of tweaking of the slide, a bit of tweaking of the presentation and a bit of tweaking of the good will on the part of the students.
And all is fine and dandy. No Antoine?
It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.
Here’s to change then.
Chill out, man. And why so verbose? Wouldn’t “too many Powerpoint slides are boring” have sufficed?
Wow, very nice presentations. Actually, compared to most lecturers you seemed to have put loads of time in to preparation… Now I’m thinking that you banned laptops since you put so much time and effort into preparation that you might be offended that students are wasting their time rather than paying attention.
In my opinion no matter what you do and how well you deliver your lectures and no matter how many laptops and smartphones you ban there will always be students who do not pay attention simply because of the attitude of most university students here. In Malta, most university students are no different from Junior College or Secondary School students who do not go to uni to learn but to pass exams (and get a stipend) and it is the system itself which promotes it.
Much better presentations than I get from my lecturers. At least he prepares something.
Example 1: Lecturer who prepares nothing, comes to the lecture five minutes beforehand and goes through the textbook we are doing, writing the answers from the back of the book to the relevant pages. In front of us. Without batting an eyelid.
Example 2: Same lecturer, when asked what our exam is going to be based on. Answer: I don’t know.
When asked what format the exam is going to be in (Essay form? Answering questions with a short answer? Working exercises?) Answer: Again, she doesn’t know. Four weeks before the exam.
Example 3: Different lecturer: At the beginning of a yearly credit, he spends twenty minutes going on about how important the readings he was going to put up “by next week” on the VLE are, telling us that, as responsible students, he expects us to have read them, to come to the lecture prepared, bla bla bla.
He takes SEVEN months to put the readings up, three weeks before the exam.
I could go on, but I better go study.